NeXTSTEP on Virtual PC (with Virtual Switch)

[Chris Roehrig]

I'm trying to set up NFS between NEXTSTEP running on Virtual PC and my
G4 Cube running OSX and I can't get networking to work reliably.
Connectix Tech Support has replied unhelpfully that they don't support
that guest OS. :-(

Has anyone gotten virtual switch networking to work properly between
NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP ("guest" VPC systems) and the Mac OS X host? E.g.
can you telnet between the two? For me, networking works fine to
other machines on the LAN and between VPC guests, but not from
NEXTSTEP to the host itself (the OSX machine running VPC). I can ping
reliably between NEXTSTEP and host, but when I try a telnet session
(either direction), the session freezes.

Here are my details:
1. VPC 5.0.4 under OSX 10.2.1
2. Problem happens in NEXTSTEP 3.3 as well as OPENSTEP 4.2.
3. Tried all released and beta DECchip drivers for NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP.
4. With Windows 95 OSR2 as a guest OS, everything works as expected,
no problems with TCP sessions to the host.
5. No problems with TCP sessions between NEXTSTEP and Win95 VPC's.
6. I can reliably ping back and forth OK between NEXTSTEP and the
host (even with 1400 byte packets).
7. Arp entries look correct on both ends.
8. When I try to establish a TCP session, netstat shows Send-Q's on
both ends with packets waiting (as if the virtual switch is not
forwarding packets). The blockage sometimes happens after the session
is ESTABLISHED, sometimes it's in a SYN_SEND or SYN_RECEIVED state.
9. Doesn't matter which end initiates the session, same results.
10. At first, I thought it might be a tcpd authentication problem or
lookupd timeout problem, but I think I've eliminated those
possibilities (and I believe those would be blockages at the
user-level, not at the kernels' Send-Qs).

I just don't understand why ping (ICMP) works but TCP doesn't. Unless
the VPC virtual switch is protocol-aware... tcpdump doesn't seem to
grab packets coming from the virtual switch, so I can't see if the
NEXTSTEP packets look ok.

Has anyone else run into this problem?
Any help is appreciated...

Thanks,
-- Chris

[Mike Lebermann]

Chris,

I don't have an answer to your problem yet, as I'm attempting to
install NEXTSTEP 3.3 on my G3 iMac running OSX 10.2.2 and VPC 5.0.4.

Care to share any install tips, particularly where you found IDE
drivers for the CDROM and hard disk and how you mounted the NEXTSTEP
CD-ROM on Mac OSX?

Any info would be appreciated!

Mike

googl...@house.org (Chris Roehrig) wrote in message news:<10222caf.02112...@posting.google.com>...

[Chris Roehrig]

Hi Mike,

I just pretty much followed the instructions from:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/notes/VPCInstallNotes.html

If you do a Google search for "OPENSTEP VPC", you'll get a couple sets
of instructions. I used Toast to image my CD's before installing
(DiskCopy didn't work for me), but I think it also worked to install
directly from the CD's. Just click "Ignore" when the Finder pops up
that the CD is unreadable.

-- Chris

udb...@yahoo.com (Mike Lebermann) wrote in message news:<f44a05a3.02112...@posting.google.com>...

[Mike Lebermann]

Thanks for the link Chris!

I got it installed with the exception of the Display and Network
drivers. When I figure out how to mount the disk image (didn't work
using instructions), I'll start playing with the virtual switch. I
have an interest in using the virtual switch on Linux also.